Teaching the multi-sensory way means getting creative
Multi-sensory teaching is by the far the best way to help children with learning differences thoroughly grasp and even master a subject or lesson.
Why is that, you ask? Well, from the beginning of humanity we’ve always learned about the world around us through our senses. Our eyes pick up visual clues, our ears take in the sounds, our hands and skin feel tactile clues, and our noses and tongues take in smell and taste. Our minds gather the data, assess it and develop theories about it. In this way, we as humanity have survived, grown and developed into what we are today.
Getting creative to make a lesson multi-sensory can be fun and rewarding for you and your students.
If you bring other forms of learning into the fold, however, you pique a child’s interest by involving their other senses. They get to truly learn again, the way they were meant to learn.
What does 3.1415926535 … mean to a child with dyscalculia? It means nothing. Why should Pi simply be a long list of never-ending numbers when you can eat pie to describe it? As you are cutting up the pie you can talk about the never-ending cycle of a circle. You can talk about how the number to describe it can never end as well. It will all make sense if you use the child’s other senses.
A little creativity goes a long way
When you consider how you are going to teach a child with a learning disability, think about how else you might share your knowledge. How can you help your students see, hear, feel, taste or smell the lesson? Sometimes the answer is sitting right in front of you: you can teach impressionist painting by practicing it.
But sometimes the answer takes a little creativity. Dig a little deeper into your lesson and see what might pop up.
When teaching about Mayan culture, you could bring in some fresh corn and discuss their cultivation of it and how important it was to them. It probably is in your lesson somewhere, but maybe it needs to be the star if it will help teach the students.
When teaching math, nothing helps better than blocks, cubes or other devices that children can hold and manipulate.
For reading, it helps if children can have control of the letters. Letter magnets are magnificent tools for teaching reading. Small black letters on a white page move around too much for dyslexic students, but bright letters that the students can move with their hands usually stay in one place in the minds of dyslexics and they can be more easily read.
If you need help coming up with multi-sensory teaching aids for any of your lessons, feel free to contact me. I’ll be glad to help.